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The MIT App Inventor 2 site works best as a portal for getting teachers started. If you're new to programming, the quick and easy tutorials will walk you through the basics. However, when it comes time to teach this material to your students, the site generally points to other online resources, such as appinventor.org, which provide better options for classroom instruction and materials.

Nevertheless, if your classes are just starting, send them to the MIT App Inventor 2 site first, after you've familiarized yourself with how it works and all that it offers. It was set up as part of the Hour of Code effort, so it can make a great intro for students. The site also includes some resources for teachers, including a special Educator's Forum along with instructions on setting up your classroom. Resources also include Concept Cards and Maker Cards, which can be printed out to get students started. For more in-depth, whole-class instruction, you may do well to follow the site's directions to the web's other resources, listed on their Resource page.

The latest incarnation of the App Inventor 2 toolset can turn novices into programmers in no time. Using a drag-and-drop, puzzle-piece interface derived from popular education programming languages such as Scratch, the MIT host site (and Chrome app) provides a set of upbeat, easy-to-follow tutorials that get kids running programs on their Android phones or tablets in minutes. If students don't have an Android device, they can also use the on-screen emulator.

As a collaboration between Google and MIT, the App Inventor 2 toolset was designed from the ground up as a platform for teaching programming to a nontechnical audience. The MIT site provides a colorful and inviting introduction; the bright green "Invent Now" button says it all. The site provides a student-focused quick start perfect for an independent learner ready to begin making apps, and their improvements to the site in the past few years have made the program easier and more intuitive to use.

Students ready to dive in can follow a series of tutorials, creating progressively more difficult and involved apps, from playing with a ball on their screen to making use of their phone's accelerometer in an app. While creating the apps, they'll modify the app's user interface and layout, use media, create drawings and animation, utilize sensors, integrate social aspects, learn to use storage and connectivity, and more. They can even use the functionality on this site to connect to Lego Mindstorms robotics kits. By laying out the app and assembling blocks of code, students can follow the included instructions or go off on their own and invent something completely new.

Simply put, students will love creating and programming their own mobile apps. As most kids are regular users of mobile devices, the process of creating an app can help demystify this amazing piece of everyday technology. For instance, students could put together a small app that turns typed text into spoken words; this process can build kids' confidence in their abilities as budding programmers, but it can also lead to an overall sense of empowerment in their ability to learn new things.

But the secret ingredient here is real-time synchronization between the visual programming environment and a connected phone. As soon as a student puts the programming pieces in place, the app starts to run on the phone. This not only brings the idea of programming immediately to life, but it encourages exploration and experimentation; the App Inventor 2 environment has lots of settings and challenges for kids to play with.

That being said, the site doesn't include systematic instruction of what the building blocks do and how to use them. Students can implement the apps in the many tutorials and then extrapolate that information to design their own creations, but creativity and innovation here are key. There will likely be a lot of trial and error as students try to bridge the gap between the tutorials and creating something meaningful and original.

Overall Rating

Engagement
Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Most kids are bound to find mobile technology cool. Learning to program mobile devices with a visual language brings coding to life in fun and empowering ways.

Pedagogy
Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Based on the constructivist principle of "learning by doing," students will find it a natural way to pick up new skills. It will appeal most to self-starters, however, as once the tutorials are exhausted, kids are on their own.

Support
Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

Video tutorials make it easy to start. PDF lessons, forums, and links to other resources open into a world of support. A complete on-site curriculum easily used by teachers would better support classroom learning.

Key Standards Supported

Reading Science/Technical

Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually (e.g., in a flowchart, diagram, model, graph, or table).

RST.9-10.7

Translate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text into visual form (e.g., a table or chart) and translate information expressed visually or mathematically (e.g., in an equation) into words.

RST.9-10.10

By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend science/technical texts in the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Key Standards Supported

Engineering Design

Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.

HS-ETS1-2

Design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering.

HS-ETS1-3

Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.

MS-ETS1-1

Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.

MS-ETS1-2

Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

MS-ETS1-3

Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.

Phenomenal tool for teaching understanding, basics, troubleshooting and persistence of programming. This is a great starter program for app building. If students have familiarity with Scratch they'll advance faster with MIT App Inventor.
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